Every day is an adventure

Another week has gone by, and I keep finding myself repeating that every day here is an adventure; just when I think I'm getting used to things, it gets switched up on me, and I just try to roll with it. Because of the long weekend, we had a shorter week this week. On Monday, the only thing of note was that we went to the Monumento de Perpetuidad, an old cemetery, where one of our hosts drew upon her background as a history teacher and told us about the tombs.

Then as the week drew on, we taught our lessons at the elementary school, quickly learning that we had to be very realistic about how much we can actually get done with our kids in an hour, as well as assisting in the classes at the teacher's college. We also went to visit a private, catholic high school, so we are really getting a taste of everything in the education system here.

Our biggest surprise though came on Thursday, when we went to the elementary school like we have every day, and were introduced to the 'new' English teacher! It seemed like no one really knew she was coming, including her... she has been retired for 5 years, so I think it was a pretty drastic change for her to be called out of retirement to this school all of a sudden. She said she was given no information, so for the past two days we've been trying to fill her in on who we are, what we've been doing, and thinking about how we are going to negotiate our role at the school from here on out. Because she has been retired, she comes from a different generation of thought about teaching than the perspective/approach that we are coming from, so we will have to delicately approach the coming weeks as far as how we will continue with some of our projects in the classes and collaborate with her in our efforts. I know we have the full support of the school still, all the teachers and the director have been nothing but supportive and totally behind us in our work there, so I'm sure it will work out in the end. The upside is that now we will have a lot more time to work with the younger grades, and we can hopefully begin to work on some lessons and projects with them. I think we were just a little thrown off by how suddenly things changed, after working so hard to plan lessons these past couple of weeks.

On Thursday night, we hung out with our friend Yosanna at our apartment, drinking mate (which she drinks sweet, unlike most Uruguayans), playing Mad Libs, and just catching up, since we hadn't seen her in a while. Hopefully tonight we will go out with her again, since we didn't go last night. People go out so late here... I find it really, really difficult to get myself to do that and to keep up with that lifestyle. I'll intend to nap beforehand, but my body just thinks it's bedtime, and doesn't want to rouse itself again! After being so sick though, I think I'm doing reasonably well with our schedule which includes many early mornings and a lot of walking.

Today I also was able to sit down and talk with a social worker from here in Paysandu. She is the daughter of one of the professors we work with, probably about a few years older than me, but still pretty young. She works at an agency that works with young children under the umbrella 'CAIF' as well as at a military base, and primarily does family work. It was very interesting to talk to her about the system here and the approach to the work... it sounds so similar to what I've been doing and to the social work system in the U.S. Next week we set up a time for me to shadow her at work a bit, so I feel like I'm actually making some headway towards my other mission here besides working in the schools, which is finding out more about the social work system, especially services for women and surrounding domestic violence. Talking to her has been the most useful thing towards that goal so far, so I'm really interested to see what she does firsthand.

Tomorrow, we are supposed to go to another one of our mentor's houses (rather, her parent's house), an English elementary school teacher at the school I was supposed to go to. We are going to have a double celebration, since it was her birthday over Beer Week, AND, she just got a Fulbright to come to the U.S. next year! So exciting!

The Sky is Blue, the Pencil is Red...

Another week seems to have slipped by, and every day comes with some new adventure, because, let's face it, in a foreign place any given task can (and usually does, whether we like it or not) turn into an adventure! Some highlights of the week include our first go at teaching our elementary school classes by ourselves, a very unexpected experience taking a tour of Paysandu, a visit to the public music school, and a day trip to Colon, Argentina.

As for our teaching, we have learned a lot from this week. We now know that the 5th graders are a pretty conscientious crew, can work well together in groups and get the hang of things pretty well by helping each other out. The 4th grade, on the other hand, has lots of useful energy but needs structure, structure, structure, and has a pretty limited understanding of basic English vocab. The 6th grade is a mixed bag, and a spunky bunch, but has a bit more capacity for understanding, if you can appeal to their preadolescent leanings. We have our schedule a bit more worked out now, freeing up some time to also assist in the younger grades' classrooms. I will also officially be staying in school #63. I'm pretty proud of our first go at teaching this week, and I hope things only get better from here on out.

On Wednesday, we were invited by the mayor (who we met last week) to go on a tour of Paysandu with her and some other municipal dignitaries. Unfortunately, the tour fell on the rainiest day we've had in a while, but we dragged ourselves out, and I'm glad that we did! Turns out it wasn't just any tour, but a tour given by actors, and we collected more and more actors as we went along at each location. It made for a very, very entertaining tour, despite the rain. They knew who the guests were, and modified their scripts accordingly, and threw in some 'English' for our benefit as a nod to our presence in the opening script; these phrases consisted of, "Welcome, the sky is blue, the pencil is red. Thank you." It was all very clever and entertaining, and ended up with us dancing around on the bus with the actors by the end.

On Friday, we had another appointment lined up, this time a visit to the public music school for elementary school kids. The school is relatively new and trying to build itself up, and the director was so welcoming and obviously very passionate about the mission and vision for the school. From what we gathered, because most kids only go to school for one 4-hour 'turn', to bring your kid every day to another 'turn' of school after or before regular primary school is too difficult for many parents and children, so that the school isn't as popular as Elizabeth and I thought it would be. The kids all elect an instrument, between the flute, piano, or guitar, are taught music theory, and are taught dance. We were obliged to join in one of the dance classes, which wasn't a total failure, and we also were asked to teach an impromptu song... luckily I had some printouts with me, so we taught "Oh Mr. Sun," which was pretty cute. The director will be sending me the pics she took throughout the afternoon, which I will post on Flickr as soon as I have them.

Since we actually have tomorrow, Monday, off, we decided to take a trip this weekend. The ETAs in Salto were busy going to a seminar and none of the Fulbrighters in Montevideo were available, so Elizabeth and I took a long day-trip to Colon, Argentina, which is right across the border from Paysandu. Luckily Elizabeth got bus tickets for the earliest bus, because by the time we got through customs and crossed the border, what should have been a quick drive turned into more of a 2.5-hour ordeal. The city was lovely though, with interesting shopping and clearly geared more towards tourism. We gathered plenty of ideas to do the next time we go, hopefully this time with a group, including some eco-tourism safaris (where you can search for geodes and agates!), a tour of the national park, and the local thermal baths. We did so much walking, I was exhausted, but we were able to get the most amazing seafood and do a bit of shopping, since things really are less expensive in Argentina, as everyone keeps telling us.

Another funny anecdote from this week was when we popped over to a traveling book fair in town. When I was buying my books, the man had me guess a number, roll a bunch of dice, guess a number for him, then he rolled the dice, and somehow I won a free book! We had told him we were English teachers, so he exclaims, "Ah, we have English books!", brings us over to a table, pulls out a box tucked away underneath, and lets us look through. We couldn't help but giggle... the box was full of Beverly Cleary and Ann of Green Gables... a pretty wonderful memory jog. I chose 'The Mouse and the Motorcycle' :)

Another amusing anecdote was that we were finally able to pay our apartment complex's 'communal fees', which gave us a legitimate residential receipt to use as proof that we do in fact live here, so we stopped over to the library to join, since they had repeatedly rejected Elizabeth before. After some explaining, they finally gave in this time. We had a few librarians helping us, and while we waited for our slips to be filled out, one librarian, eyeing us wearily, eventually asked what we were interested in reading, and when we started asking for things, she warmed up to us right away and busied herself finding things for us. When I asked for things having to do with women or gender, I watched her as she painstakingly sifted through shelves for a while, eventually coming back with a few amusing choices, including 'Men are from Mars, Women are from Venus.' I chose a book about the idiosyncrasies of the Uruguayan, which I am actually finding that I identify with a great deal.

*Note: the library is quite interesting, and rather old-school, as they say... it consists of a small room with a few rows of bookshelves behind a desk. You walk up to the desk, ask for something specific or something general, and then the librarian will search the shelves for you. I like how it really keeps the profession of the librarian alive. There's also an ancient card-catalogue, if you're really ambitious.*

I'm sure there is so much more to say but I will leave it at that for now... stay tuned, and please keep in touch! Also, feel free to comment, so I know people are actually out there ;)

Teaching and Settling In

After a packed couple of weeks, now Elizabeth and I are trying to settle into a more regular everyday life here. We came back from our vacation week and started going to classes again at the IFD, Institucion Formacion Docente, or the teacher's college, and going to Escuela #63, the elementary school.

A bit about each:

The IFD is a teacher's college where they have careers for teachers to become primary school teachers, secondary school teachers, and teachers of more specialized subjects. One of the newest specializations they have is English teaching, which is the program we are assisting. Up until recently we had mostly been observing all different kinds of classes to get a feel for the school, and presenting ourselves and answering questions about our lives and the U.S. The regular teaching classes are obviously all in spanish, and the english teaching classes are the only ones in english. This week is our first week actually planning lessons to teach in the english teaching classes; for one class, the professor asked us to plan a lesson around a holiday that is important in our community, so I'm doing the Fourth of July and talking about Compo Beach, the fireworks, the Minuteman, etc., with puzzles, pictures, and some things I've written. The school has a morning session and an evening session, so that the mornings are mostly younger people who haven't started working yet, and the evening sessions are often older people who go to school after work. Some classes go as late as 12 at night! We have luckily found this a good place to meet younger people and make friends to go out with, especially those who want to improve their english.

Originally, I was supposed to go to a different elementary school from Elizabeth, but due to some outbreaks of illnesses at that school, I started going to Escuela #63 instead of #15, and it seems that will be where I will stay. Escuela #63 is a primary school, meaning it goes from 1st to 6th grade, after which the students move right on to high school. In all the public schools here, most students only go for a certain number of hours during a certain time of day, and then a different shift of students come at a different time of day... in the high schools, they can have up to 4 shifts! BUT, this particular elementary school is special because it is one of a few 'full time schools' where the students go for a similar school day to the school day in the U.S. They are given breakfast, lunch, and snacks, and have a variety of special subjects like carpentry and art. Usually full-time schools are geared towards more impoverished communities to give the kids a stable, nourishing environment, but Escuela #63 seems to be a bit of an exception to that rule, and is a very desirable school to go to. It has a bit of an avant-garde feel, and aims to be a very family-like, though structured environment. Personally, I really like the school in general, and I feel really comfortable there. They definitely have a family atmosphere... the director has a very jovial, jokester attitude, and wants the best for everyone, and the teachers are all very supportive. So far we have been to a retirement party and a PTA meeting, so we are definitely being included in the family. As soon as we walk into the school, kids start screaming our names or shouting 'Helloooo!', and we have kids running up to us all day long and kissing and hugging us. It's pretty adorable.

One of the biggest changes lately is that instead of coming in and observing some classes and assisting in others at the primary school, we are now going to be taking on a lot more responsibility. Unfortunately, one of our mentor english teachers at the school is having to go on medical leave, so we have offered to more or less take over her classes for a while, since it is very difficult to find english teachers in Uruguay. She teaches the 4th, 5th, and 6th grades in the afternoons, so now we will be going into that school every afternoon, having lunch, then teaching our own lesson plans. We had our first class yesterday with the 5th graders where we did some name-game type stuff and played a competition game that would give us a sense of what kind of vocabulary they have and what they need to work on, and it went really well! The kids seemed to enjoy themselves, so we are feeling more confident now I think. We are also giving them a total immersion experience and ONLY speaking in english while in the class, so that was eye-opening for them, but it is amazing what you can communicate without really sharing the same language.

So that's a bit of a recap of what we will be doing on a regular basis. Yesterday, we also went to a high school with one of our hosts from the teacher's college, since all teachers here seem to work in as many as 4 different schools at once (sometimes ranging from private to public to high school to college), which was also an interesting experience. It was a pleasant surprise how insightful the questions the high schoolers had for us were, including health care, violence, schools, and jobs for young people in the U.S. It makes me think that I might like to try my hand at also assisting/teaching at a high school in Montevideo. Yesterday, we also had a meeting with the mayor, who is the first female mayor of Paysandu. In an odd twist of fate, her son had been in the high school class we went to in the morning! She was very nice... everyone here is so supportive of our presence, and fully behind the Fulbright mission for cultural exchange to promote peace and understanding.... and stuff like that, lol. On Sunday night, we also went to a play about Leonardo de Vinci, which was interesting, and it was nice just to get a taste of theater again.

Other than that, we have spent a lot of time buying groceries, going to our fruit and veggie guy around the corner, experimenting in the kitchen with what we can find in the store to recreate things we like to eat, and feeling like we should be sleeping and exercising more (though we do a lot of walking here).

The last bit of exciting news is that we have INTERNET! After a long and hard struggle, and definitely more effort on Elizabeth's part, we were able to buy modems with an unlimited plan for a pretty good price, after many hours of waiting in line at the government-run cell phone and internet service center, without having to do some of the crazy things we were originally being asked to do, like going to the police and bringing people to prove that we live here, giving over our first born sons, etc etc. BUT, they did ask us to set up a weird pre-pay thing at the national bank connected to our credit cards, since we are foreigners, but they totally just made up that deal with us on the spot, so no one knows what we are talking about when we mention it. Hopefully we will get to the bank today to straighten it out. In the meantime, the modems are working, even though we haven't done the prepay thing... the MODEMS don't know we are foreigners, haha...

Anyway, that is the news for now. Keep in touch!

Semana de la cerveza!

It has unfortunately been a bit of a while since my last full post, so there is much to tell! I will devote this post to going over the events of 'Semana de la Cerveza,' or Beer Week, also known as Holy Week (since it is Easter week after all), also known as Tourism Week, as it has become in Paysandu. Next post I will go into detail about everything we are doing for work at the schools, and more about our typical every-day life.

In my last post the vacation week had just started... oddly enough, this week came one week after the beginning of our work here in Paysandu, so it was hard to really appreciate having a vacation. The first work week here was a bit overwhelming, meeting so many new people and getting a sense of what we would be doing for the next three months, so in that sense it was nice to have a breather after that first deluge. But, in reality, I think all the ETAs were feeling the anxiety of just wanting to get started. Nevertheless, we had a very fun week. After spending the weekend in Paysandu, where every night we would go down to the beach for the festival, look at the artisan and gift stands, food stands, and sometime go into the amphitheater to listen to the various shows going on, we moved on to Salto. We took a bus late Tues morning, which took far longer than it should of since it got stuck behind a slow tractor-trailer or something. Lucky me, I got stuck sitting next to a woman who had a toddler and a baby on her lap. So much for personal space.

There are three ETAs in Salto: Beth, who has a Master's in Folklore and is from the Midwest, Meara, who went to Smith and spent the last year teaching English in Turkey and is from the West Coast, and Wesley, the lone guy, who is interested in teaching and is from the Washington D.C. area. Meara and Wes met us at the station and we all took a taxi to meet up with Beth at their hotel, La Gran Concordia, where they will be living for the next three months. However, during this busy holiday week, the hotel had them in rooms that are rarely used and will not be the rooms they will permanently be living in. This unfortunate circumstance had some unforeseen side-effects; one being that everyone was somewhat allergic to the mustiness of the rooms, and the other being that I'm pretty sure the bites that I ended up with all over my body after our two-day stay were from bed bugs. Eww. On the bright side, the hotel is a very cool, funky, historic hotel (take a look at the pics on Flickr!). They have several outdoor patio spaces that have an amazing secret-garden-esque feel, unique features such as a pottery studio, and a room that serves as a shrine to where Carlos Gardel used to stay (sorry, no picture were allowed... haha I have no idea why... the Uruguayans are very protective of their relationship to Carlos Gardel!). You can definitely feel that it is the type of old hotel that is haunted.

Then we all went out for a huge lunch. A few of the choice items here, most of which I don't eat: chivito, which are HUGE flank steak sandwiches piled high with egg, veggies, olives, ham, you name it; milanesa, which is fried meat, and often comes piled high with cheese or other toppings; pizza, which when ordered plain is just sauce on bread but is otherwise dripping with cheese; pasta with various sauces, sometimes made with tasty unusual things like beets or squash; hot sandwiches, usually containing ham and cheese, cold sandwiches, hamburgers, hot dogs, etc etc. And everything, but I mean EVERYTHING (including pizza) is eaten with mayonnaise. But you can also find chicken sandwiches, salads, and an assortment of things that are more Allison-friendly. After lunch we had a bit of a rest at the hotel, and decided to wait until it got cooler to go out to one of the natural hot springs. These thermal baths were quite the experience. They have them all over this region, but the ones in Salto are apparently better taken care of than the ones in Paysandu, as well as easier to get to from the center of the city. Unfortunately, the baths were PACKED. I have never seen so many people crowded into a place like that before, so that made for an interesting experience. They look like normal pools, but some of them are warm, and some are very hot, and it's fascinating how they just come naturally that way. There are also lots of sprinklers and showers of the water streaming down from different places. They were not so relaxing when you had kids jumping in and out and splashing you with hot water though... we were compelled to move into one of the hotter, smaller pools mainly populated by older people. As Beth pointed out, we had to laugh a bit at the decor; the place definitely evoked a strong 50's resort-kitsch vibe, what with colored lights illuminating trees, etc.

However, as a group, we do stand out. Hearing us speaking English, we ended up with a crowd of kids around us asking lots of questions about where we were from. People truly are surprised to have people from the U.S. here; we really are somewhat of a novelty, even in such a touristy place. After the springs we walked around for a bit, headed back to the city, had some dinner, than crashed in the hotel. The next morning, we went for a long walk by the river... my impression of Salto is that although it is very comparable to Paysandu, it has been better maintained over the last few years, so that they have more touristy things like a better walkway along their part of the river, and that there is more aesthetic upkeep for public spaces.

*Side note: Unfortunately for Paysandu, it was a huge industrial city that therefore attracted lots of people and was very lively, but slowly the factories have all shut down or have been taken over, and the city has really been hurting over these last 10 or even 20 years. *

As we walked along the river, Beth and I discovered you could search for agates and other really beautiful semi-precious stones, and I became pretty consumed with this venture. We took a long, meandering walk, eventually headed back to the hotel, and had a picnic of empanadas and fruit in one of the patios. That afternoon we decided we were going to do our own wine tasting of local tannats, so we went to the store and bought fruit, wine, cheese, and crackers. That evening we set up in one of the hidden garden areas, and drank wine and ate snacks and talked for hours until the sun had completely set and all we had was the light of the bright full moon. Eventually we moved inside, had a quick dinner, and went to bed.

The next day, we all traveled together back to Paysandu. Later that afternoon, we were joined by two other Fulbrighters who have research grants in Montevideo; Lars, who is working on his dissertation, and Kate, who is the only other recent grad besides myself, and she is studying the Uruguayan prison system.

*Note: There is one more research-grant Fulbrighter in Montevideo, Flora, who is studying the aqueduct, but she went somewhere else for the week*

We walked around for a bit, tried the regional dessert 'Chaja' (a meringue, cream, and fruit concoction), and then later that night went to the fair. Everyone camped out on mattresses, couch, or floor, and settled in for the night, EXCEPT Elizabeth and I, who let ourselves be dragged out at 2 am to a party at the Golf Club hosted by the rugby team, with our friend Yosanna and her cousin. (We thought of it as an investment in our social life.) It was quite the dance party, kind of reminded us of a cross between high school parties and prom, and was fun but made us feel a bit old. The next day we failed at getting tickets for a tour bus, but were able to meet up for lunch with Mieke, a professor from American University here on a three-month Fulbright grant, her amazingly sweet 11 year old daughter, and her husband, who is a labor-law lawyer who lived in Africa for 7 years and didn't get his law degree until his late 30s. They are such interesting, warm people, who made a point of visiting us in Paysandu on their way back from a stay in Tacuarembo. We all made and ate dinner in our apartment that night (see pics) then went back to the fair and saw a Murga show, which is a colorful musical tradition centered around political and social satire and criticism. It was really interesting and entertaining, but most of the jokes went way over our heads.

The next day everyone went back to their respective places, and that night Elizabeth and I went back to the fair one last time to see the end of a concert by Jaime Roos, a hugely popular singer who has been around for quite some time, often referred to as 'a classic,' and the concert for No Te Va Gustar (translation: you aren't going to like this, haha), a really popular, young pop-rock band in Uurugay. We met up with Yosanna and her boyfriend, and then went out for a midnight meal (as people do here, and they consider that 'dinner'), where we were joined by another student from the institute. Finally on Sunday we took it easy after running around all week, missing out on a few last concerts but gearing up for the work week ahead, which I will talk about in my next post.

New pictures!

I've finally been able to post lots of new pictures on my Flickr site. Check them out!
www.flickr.com/photos/allisonbloom
Enjoy!
I will put up a real post here soonn ;)